Here's how the new state report cards will look when they are released Thursday, shown in a screen capture from the Ohio Department of Education. Note that the overall grade for districts and schools - as well as grades on six major components of school performance - won't be available until 2015.Ohio Department of Education

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Don't expect a simple rating for your school or school district on the state report cards when they are released tomorrow.

The good news: Gone are the old ratings like "continuous improvement" and "academic watch," which were hard to understand

In their place will be the traditional A to F grades you're used to seeing on student report cards.

But just like a student, a school or district won't have an overall grade anymore. Each school or district will instead receive multiple grades for their performance in separate categories.

Just as a student can receive an A in math and B in English, a district can receive an A in its four-year graduation rate and B in value added, a measure of students' academic growth from year to year. Schools can have up to nine grades this year, depending on what grades they cover.

Overall grades for schools and districts won't be available again for a few years.

That's because districts are starting to use the new Common Core standards, a set of standards developed by multiple states. The state expects test scores to fall when students are measured against those higher standards, so districts convinced the state last year to hold off on overall grades during the transition.

They'll return in the fall of 2015 after students take new state tests that spring. In the meantime, changes to the report cards will be phased in.

See below for a preview of the new categories and grades. To show what the changes would look like, the Ohio Department of Education this summer re-calculated last year's report cards and graded the new categories for every district and school with 2011-12 test results.

"In districts that do really well, there are always schools that do really poorly in some categories," he said.

If the new system had been in place last year, for example, the top-rated Brecksville-Broadview Heights district would have received mostly A's, but a D for how much progress it made with students with disabilities.

At the same time, the Cleveland schools would have received mostly F's, but would have scored an A in advancing students with disabilities.

State Superintendent Richard Ross, who was an education advisor for Gov John Kasich when the state decided to change the cards last year, said he wanted them to keep having overall grades. He has since changed his mind.

"Maybe this transition for a couple years is a good thing," he said. "Districts will have to say, 'We've got good things and some not-so-good things."

Asked which grade he considered most important in the new format, Ross replied, "All of it."

"They're all important components," he said.

One category in particular will show low grades across Ohio, Gunlock and Ross warned, while also being harder to understand.

Annual Measurable Objectives, or AMO's, replace the old report card rating for how districts and schools did on Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP. That was a measure used in former President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind plan that required improvements in multiple categories of students: white, Asian, Hispanic, African-American, multi-racial, economically disadvantaged,ans limited English proficiency.

Gunlock said Ohio's goal is to cut the achievement gaps between the different groups in half over the next six years, but schools are not doing well with it.

"I think we will see that we are doing a very poor job overall with how we are doing with the education of some of our sub groups," Gunlock said. " Even our "better" districts will be failing in many of these areas."

Ross said the low grades in some categories are not a "gotcha" for districts.

"It's about having transparency for children and parents," he said.

Expect more changes on report cards next year and then again in 2015. The eventual goal is to have an overall grade, then grades in six different "components" of district performance, and then grades for multiple "elements" within each component.

Component grades will come in 2015 along with the overall grades. Those will be in the areas of Achievement, Progress, Gap Closing, Graduation Rate, K-3 Literacy and Prepared For Success.

Until then, the graded categories are just elements of these larger components. Next year, the cards will include grades for elements of the K-3 Literacy and Prepared For Success components.

Here's a quick look at how all school
districts in Northeast Ohio were rated under the old report card system
last fall, with a sampling of grades they would have received under
Ohio's new system.